Posts tagged journalism tools

Journalism.co.uk named ProPublica’s TimelineSetter as its tool of the week Tool of the week: ProPublica’s TimelineSetter What is it? A tool for creating beautiful interactive timelines. How is it of use to journalists? Having spent time developing a timeline tool, US investigative journalism news site ProPublica has made the code available for others to use, enabling journalists to build interactive timelines from a spreadsheet. ProPublica’s timeline on how one blast affected five soldiers is a clear demonstration as to just how effective the tool can be in online storytelling. The LA Times and Chicago Tribune are among those who have utilised the open source software since it was made public in April 2011.

Journalism.co.uk named ProPublica’s TimelineSetter as its tool of the week

Tool of the week: ProPublica’s TimelineSetter

What is it? A tool for creating beautiful interactive timelines.

How is it of use to journalists? Having spent time developing a timeline tool, US investigative journalism news site ProPublica has made the code available for others to use, enabling journalists to build interactive timelines from a spreadsheet.

ProPublica’s timeline on how one blast affected five soldiers is a clear demonstration as to just how effective the tool can be in online storytelling.

The LA Times and Chicago Tribune are among those who have utilised the open source software since it was made public in April 2011.

blogs.journalism.co.uk

Tool of the week: ZeeMaps What is it? A free mapping tool that allows you to create interactive maps with videos and photos. ZeeMaps would be a great way of telling location-based visual stories such as of rioting, Occupy Wall Street protests and severe weather. How is it of use to journalists? ZeeMaps allows you to create maps by uploading data sets or plotting the information using marker points, much as you would using the My Places option in Google Maps. You can then embed your map in a blog post or save as it as jpeg or pdf. It is free if you allow adverts, you can pay to go ad free. Wired Digital is among the news organisations using the tool, according to a testimonial on the ZeeMaps site. ZeeMaps takes the plotting marker points idea of Google Maps several steps further, allowing you to add photos, video and, using the wiki option, to collaborate and ask others to add information. You can either upload data, such as from Google Docs, CSV, KML or Geo RSS feeds, or you can plot the information with markers, as you would using Google Maps, and then export the data as a CSV file. For the rest of the article, please see journalism.co.uk 

Tool of the week: ZeeMaps

What is it? A free mapping tool that allows you to create interactive maps with videos and photos. ZeeMaps would be a great way of telling location-based visual stories such as of rioting, Occupy Wall Street protests and severe weather.

How is it of use to journalists? ZeeMaps allows you to create maps by uploading data sets or plotting the information using marker points, much as you would using the My Places option in Google Maps. You can then embed your map in a blog post or save as it as jpeg or pdf. It is free if you allow adverts, you can pay to go ad free.

Wired Digital is among the news organisations using the tool, according to a testimonial on the ZeeMaps site.

ZeeMaps takes the plotting marker points idea of Google Maps several steps further, allowing you to add photos, video and, using the wiki option, to collaborate and ask others to add information.

You can either upload data, such as from Google Docs, CSV, KML or Geo RSS feeds, or you can plot the information with markers, as you would using Google Maps, and then export the data as a CSV file.

For the rest of the article, please see journalism.co.uk 

blogs.journalism.co.uk

ReportingOn: A Post Mortem

In 2008, Ryan Sholin won a Knight News Challenge grant to create ReportingOn, a Web-based application to connect reporters working on similar stories so that they could share information.

Earlier this week, he mothballed the project and wrote a few words about the experience.

And a few recommendations for developers of software “for journalists:”

  • Reporters don’t want to talk about unpublished stories in public.
  • Unless they’re looking for sources.
  • There are some great places on the Internet to find sources.
  • When they do talk about unpublished stories among themselves, they do it in familiar, well-lit places, like e-mail or the telephone. Not in your application.
  • Actually, keep this in mind: Unless what you’re building meets a very journalism-specific need, you’re probably grinding your gears to build something “for journalists” when they just need a great communication tool, independent of any particular niche or category of users.
World o’ Apps Reynolds Journalism Institute at the University of Missouri has a comprehensive rundown of apps and hardware for the digitally enabled, can record-report-edit-post, journalist of the present, future and not so distant past. Some call these creatures Mobile Journalists.

World o’ Apps

Reynolds Journalism Institute at the University of Missouri has a comprehensive rundown of apps and hardware for the digitally enabled, can record-report-edit-post, journalist of the present, future and not so distant past.

Some call these creatures Mobile Journalists.